The Importance of Insurance and Business Continuity Planning

A Guest Blog by Nigel Adams, Insurance Expert.

I have now been in corporate Risk Management and Insurance for 40 years, and my Business Severn Bay Corporate Solutions limited is now 10 years old. www.severnbay.com We have a varied clientele, ranging from small independent traders, through SME family businesses, to some very large corporates turning over in excess of £100,000,000. We are able to accommodate all forms of commercial insurance.

Cutting costs during Covid – 19

In this particularly difficult time, we have been helping clients cut costs to help them “get through” this period. We only care about the correct technical solution, at the lowest price possible and then we declare our fixed fee up-front, so they know it’s reasonable. There is no commission in our model, so no conflict of interest at all. In one case we reduced our clients total spend by £46,000 compared to last year, by declaring lower figures and also advising them to SORN their fleet which was all laid up in their yard.

Remembering to maintain protection

Probably the most important conversation has been around maintaining the correct covers which protect them going forward. If you have substantial premises, stock, equipment or machinery then it is just as important to cover it now, even if you are not trading at the moment, after all if it all burns down you really have lost your business!

The other very important point is around liability covers. Just because you are not trading at the present time does not mean it’s safe to cancel insurances or fail to renew them! The reason is very simple. Your liability for everything you have ever done still exists and the policy that responds to a claim is the one that is on cover at the time the claim arrives, not the one that was on cover when the work was done. If you fail to renew public and products liability or professional indemnity covers, and a claim arrives you are dealing with it out of your own pocket, so be aware!

Business Continuity Planning

For some time however, I’ve been convinced that the quality of corporate risk management should start with Business Continuity Planning, let me explain. When we engage with clients on Business Continuity Planning, we look at all the business impacts that might arise related to an event or events, that disrupts the organisations ability to continue to deliver its prioritised products and / or services.

This means that you look at all of the events regardless of whether or not they are insurable, and this means events which can last as little as a few hours, right up to those that can last a month or longer. In the process you identify the insurable risks and of course these are taken care of in the normal manner by a spread of different contracts designed to plug as many holes as are possible. What you’re then left with is the uninsurable risks and for these you need a plan. That is what Business Continuity Planning does for you.

A six-stage process starts with:

1. POLICY & PROGRAMME MANAGEMENT with the board
2. EMBEDDING at all levels in the organisation using training and awareness exercises
3. ANALYSIS of the business impacts leads directly to the
4. DESIGN of detailed plans which are then
5. IMPLEMENTED within the organisation so Business Continuity becomes business as usual and finally those plans are
6. VALIDATED by exercises with different scenarios to check the plans remain valid over time.

This leads to a process of continual improvement and enhanced resilience within the organisation, which is of course the aim of Business Continuity planning. To this end we set up a new company www.bcmp-consulting.com to provide business continuity services to clients.

So, to conclude, we now have the Corporate Insurance and Business Continuity disciplines firmly embedded within our business, alongside staff members who have corporate Risk Management as professional qualifications. Allied to our memberships of the BCI, the Business Continuity Institute and AIRMIC, the Association of Insurance and Risk Management in Industry and Commerce, we have all the disciplines and ongoing professional development we could possibly need.

Nigel Adams, Director, Severn Bay Corporate Solutions and the BCMP Consulting.

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